Stalker is a series of FPS games created by GSC Game World, a Ukrainian-based developer, set in a fictional incarnation of the Zone of Exclusion, a 35km area around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that has become warped by a series of events following the original 1986 disaster.

They are characterized by their deep level of roleplaying, immersive world, excellent combat and the unique AI.

The games are primarily about sitting around a campfire, sharing stories about how you nearly got killed, the rare treasures you found, and your personal tales of rejection by Duty.

Welcome, fellow stalker, to the Zone. She is a beautiful, scary, cruel mistress but we love her so.

What is the Zone?

The Zone is your best friend or worst enemy. She is the sole provider for any number of Stalkers that walk upon her surface. Many have tried to uncover all of her secrets, but she constantly surprises even the most experienced Stalkers, and will destroy you if you underestimate her.

The Zone consists of a 35km area around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that has become out of touch with reality as we know it. Destructive anomalies litter the zone, their locations shifting with each deadly emission from the heart of the Zone. Many a careless stalker has met their untimely demise at the hands of them, assuming the mutants do not get to them first...

A brief, incomplete timeline of the major events of the Zone

1981 - A scientific research bunker is created in what would become known as the Dark Valley
1986 - There is a meltdown at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Workers living in the surrounding area are evacuated. A 30km Zone of Exclusion is set up around the site, in the interest of public safety.
1991 - The Soviet Union collapses. All major funding into the effects of the Zone are publicly stopped. Several projects are continued, out of sight of the public eye.
1999 - The Ukrainian government is concerned about illegal experiments being performed in the Zone and sends a special unit to investigate. Reports are inconclusive, but the memos of O. O. Dobrynini cause considerable disturbance among those who read them.
2001 - Public interest in the Zone is rekindled when rumours spread of the Zone acting strangely. In an area 10km from the Power Plant strange creatures and phenomena have been recorded. When a group of tourists mysteriously vanish, the Zone is locked down by the government.
2005 - Reports of strange sightings continue and seem to be occurring further away from the center of the Zone. Weather disturbances aswell as strange localized tremors are reported.
2006 - On March 6th, Blinding light appears above the Chernobyl Power Plant. Observers note that it disappeared as quickly as it appeared.. No conclusive explanation has been found. On April 12th, another bright light was recorded. This was followed by severe energy disturbances and an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale. On June 10th, in what would become known as the "Second Disaster", the first known emission occurred. Vast amounts of power erupted from the center of the Zone, increasing its size by 5km. This is largely considered the birth of the modern Zone, where the very laws of science are turned on their head. Most of the military garrisoned in the Zone perish and villages close by are evacuated
2009 - A group of Kiev scientists discover a means of detecting anomalous activity up to a radius of 10 meters. In a winter expedition, they safely manage to explore the first 1km of the Zone.
2010 - Further expeditions are made deeper into the zone. The first traces of illegal stalker activity are discovered, along with mysterious artifacts that appear to be borne of the Zone.
2011 - The golden age of Stalking begins. Embiggened by reports of people surviving in the Zone, brave fortune seekers begin to explore the Zone in hopes of making a name for themselves. Later on in the year, the second major emission occurs. During the aftermath of this, several factions begin to struggle for influence in the Zone. Thus begins the events of Clear Sky
2012 - On May 1st, the Marked One appears mysteriously in a bunker just inside the Cordon. This starts of the events of Shadow of Chernobyl. August 1st, Major Degtyarev is sent into the Zone to investigate the failure of Operation Fairway. This starts the events of Call of Pripyat

One of the defining aspects of the Zone are the numerous anomalies that you will encounter, parts of the Zone that seem to defy the normal rules of science and logic. Out of these are borne artifacts, strange constructs that give owners incredible power, usually at some expense. Some of the more common ones include:

Springboards/Mosquito Balds

One of the first known anomalies, these are the most basic but do not underestimate them. They are characterized by what appears to be a heat haze surrounding the area of effect. A careless stalker walking into one will be subjected to an intense gravitational effect which can do severe damage. They can be detected using bolts or other small objects. They spawn several common artifacts.

Electro

A very deadly anomaly, as it name suggests it is primarily electric. Easily spotted during the day by the blue coloured sparks that emit from it. It is much more difficult to spot during the night, so caution is advised.

Fruit Punch

At first this could be mistaken for radioactive waste, but if only it were that simple. Anyone coming in contact with these will be subjected to severe chemical burns. They are usually found underground and are quite easy to spot. Avoiding them proves slightly more tricky.

There are many more anomalies out there, all with different effects. Half the fun is discovering them, the other half is surviving them.

If the anomalies don't get you, the mutants surely will. The Zone has a number of mutants within it. Some of the most common are:

Blind Dogs

Heavily mutated remnants of the canine population of Chernobyl. These dogs have become blind, but have prospered in the Zone by utilizing their enhanced sense of smell and hearing. They often attack in packs and are quite cowardly on their own.

Fleshes

Mutated pigs. These animals probably underwent the most dramatic changes. Becoming more insect-like in nature, they have a hardened carapace and heavily mutated external features. They are mostly peaceful and will leave you alone if you leave them alone, but can become aggressive if threatened.

Snorks

These are believed to be what remains of the military that were caught in the blast of the first emission. Heavily mutated, they are mere shadows of what they once were. They move around on all fours, unable to support their weight standing upright. They are characterized by very strong tendons in their legs that allow them to jump great distances. Often travel in packs, a very deadly mutant.

As the Zone increased its allure to the general populace as a place to find fame and fortune, various factions sprung up who share common interests and beliefs.

Clear Sky (defunct)

One of the first groups to penetrate the Zone, they were primarily concerned with investigating the zone and its effects. Unlike Ecologists, they were not hesitant to use force where necessary and often contracted PMCs to help them with their inquiries.

Ecologists

One of the most persistent groups in the Zone, these groups of scientists believe the Zone to be a great gift to humanity and wish to study and conserve the Zone wherever possible. They believe the secrets the Zone contains have untold benefits for humanity.

Loners

The so-called Free Stalkers of the Zone. These are stalkers not particularly affiliated with any group. They tend to look out for each other and try not to get involved in the petty squabbles of other factions.

Bandits

The antithesis of the Loners, these are a loosely organized group that believe in every man for themselves. If there's money or good times to be had, they will be there. They also have kickin' rad taste in music.

Mercenaries

Private soldiers often hired to do the bidding of other people. They have a mysterious presence in the Zone, hinting at a larger conspiracy at work. Whether it be private citizens or foreign governments, if they have the money they will get the job done.

Freedom

Anarchists and revolutionaries, Freedom believe that the Zone should be open to all, for both technological and scientific advancement and for every man to prosper from its bounty. This ideology has brought them into direct conflict with...

Duty

Mainly composed of former-military, and other people who have seen the horrors the Zone can inflict, Duty firmly believes that the Zone is a blight upon the Earth and wish for it and everything it spawns to be destroyed. Often considered to be fascists, they believe that force is the only language the Zone understands.

Monolith

A very secretive group of religious fanatics. Not much is known about them or their beliefs, but they seem to be operating from the heart of the Zone and are unusually well equipped.

A: While this may have been true at one point, thanks to the vast amounts of community support and mods the games have risen from their humble beginnings to become (reasonably) polished works of art in their own right.

The X-Ray engine is a relentless arbiter of system performance. Any bottlenecks your computer has will be found and mercilessly attacked until it brings it to its knees. In (general) order of importance the most important things you will need are:

1. A good CPU - the higher clock speed the better. Dual/Quad Cores are very under utilized. The brunt of most of the work will be done on one core, with a second core being used for background tasks.
2. A good I/O speed. Solid State Drives are obviously the best, but a fast hard drive will also increase your performance. The game pulls data from the hard drive constantly, so the faster the better.
3. RAM - the more the better. Left to its own devices it will eat all the RAM it can get hold of.
3. A graphics card. Stalker games are usually not the most graphically intense. If you have a semi-decent card you will be fine as far as GPU power goes.
4. A sense of patience... the X-Ray engine can be a finicky, frustrating thing to work with, but thankfully there are many people out there to help you with whatever issues you have and most are fairly easily sorted out.

The Marked One is incredibly short. Your default eyeline is, for some reason, lower than every other human by default. You can change this by setting the "camera_height_factor" value in the actor.ltx file from 0.85 to 0.94 - enjoy your normal sized Marked One!

Just thought I'd post a cool new thing Bangalore did that does the following:
1) Greatly reduces microstutter in the game
2) Decreases lag caused by lua files
3) Increased memory ceiling before a crash

It works with CS and COP. Make sure you back up your original lua.JIT.1.1.4.dll.

For Clear Sky/Call of Pripyat, if you're using Full (enhanced) dynamic lighting, turn SSAO, Sun Quality and Sun Rays down to LOW. The quality hit is barely noticeable, but you will get a significant boost in FPS.

You can also lower vision/lighting distance. Setting these to about 50% will not make a huge visual difference (but this is a matter of preference)

Q: Help me I keep dying and I can't shoot straight, what the gently caress is wrong with this game?

A: Calm down. You're experiencing culture shock. While you may be used to games where you can take a faceful of lead and keep on trucking, the Stalker games do not operate in that manner. Take your time, find some decent cover, and try your best not to be flanked. Bullets are generally lethal in these games, and if you take too many hits you will die a horrible death. Aiming is a bit finicky (but there are mods for that), but the Stalker games utilize actual ballistic models for their weapons. Weapons are affected by travel time, drop, the phases of the moon, and whatever voodoo curse Sidorovich has placed on them.

Q: I can't find the basement and/or the rifle, where are they?

A: Chances are pretty drat good you're looking in completely the wrong place or for the completely wrong thing. The Stalker games, when they got translated to English, came with a few relics of the original language that never really got adequately translated. Thus "attic" became "basement" and "shotgun" became "rifle". As with most things in this game, there are simple, quick fixes to remedy those problems.

Q: Prefetching? What's that?

A: GSC, with the best intentions of the world, decided to do people a solid when they made their games. To improve performance, they decided to make the games preload all the data you will need in order to play the game smoothly.

Well, that's the theory.

In practice this often didn't work out the way they intended. Multiple people have issues with prefetching, as it's usually very unselective about what it loads, and if not properly configured (usually by mods) it will load every single file in the game into memory. As you can imagine, this is a bit burdensome and can reduce overall performance.

Thankfully there's an easy solution for two of the games. Simply add -noprefetch to the launch options of Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky and all your prefetching blues will vanish. Call of Pripyat involves a bit more work, but that will be covered later on.

Q: In which order should I play the games?

A: Most people would suggest you start with Shadow of Chernobyl. Out of all three of the games, this is probably the most story driven and atmospheric of the three. From there you can either go straight to Clear Sky or skip it, if you're not feeling particular daring, and go straight to Call of Pripyat. The relative merits/pitfalls of each game will be discussed later on.

Q: These games are too easy/I want the full experience

A: For the most part, the Stalker games have difficulty settings that actually make sense and are fair. Some mods may change this (most don't), but in general you will always want to be playing on Master difficulty. This removes the artificial restrictions that other Stalkers have, like having only a 40% chance to hit you, it increases the damage done by all weapons considerably (this is for both you and other stalkers - they can kill you quicker, but they will drop like flies too) and generally makes the AI slightly better. If you're an extra masochist, turn the crosshair off and rely on your iron sights.

Q: Tell me where to get the cool mods.

As with most niche games, most of the really innovative mods come from the russian side of the border. To date, there have been about 20+ really fun, really creative new mods that have been released... unfortunately in Russian only. Some people have been really good about translating them. Some good resources

Possibly the key site in Russian modding. If it's new, chances are good it will end up here. Home of the popular mod, DMX (which Stalkersoup is based upon) and countless others. Going through their forums, or checking out their reviews with Google chrome's translate is highly recommended.

Mainly useful for the forums. A few people here undertake translation tasks for some of the more popular Russian mods, or new and experimental ones in general. If you can't find a translation, ask around for one - someone might be able to help.

The one that started it all. Set in the year 2011, a mysterious unidentified man is found in an abandoned truck on the outskirts of the Zone. He is later revived and knows little of his past. His PDA has only one entry: Kill Strelok

Playing through the eyes of the Marked One, the goal of Shadow of Chernobyl is to find and kill Strelok, whoever he may be. Being the first of the three games, it is often considered to be the most basic gameplay wise (although thanks to modders this has become far from the case). Make no mistake, though, this game is not your average run of the mill FPS. Out of the box it has an amazing amount of complexity and intrigue to keep you interested. It is also considered the most atmospheric and scary of all three games. The Zone is truly a mystery in this game.

A: Not quite. While Shadow of Chernobyl falls short in a lot of regards when it comes to polish, it's definitely playable out of the box, fully patched, and for hardcore purists this may be the best option (with a few caveats)

That being said, many people consider a certain mod to be "essential" for a first playthrough. More on that later.

Q: People keep dying! Help!

A: That's not a question. The Zone is a very unforgiving place, and many of the "plot essential" NPCs can meet untimely demises through roaming bandits, mutants, or just plain bad luck. Fortunately, you play a rather cold-hearted bastard and it's not these NPCs you need, but information they have. If they do die, you can get this information from their lifeless corpse (along with everything else)

Q: I want to party with Duty but they won't let me. Why?

A: Ignore that rear end in a top hat in the hangar. He's a bit of a douche.

Q: How do I join a faction?

A: Unfortunately for all practical purposes you cannot. You can, however, be an influential figure in the ongoing conflict between Duty and Freedom.

Q: I need some help starting out. Any advice?

A: There is quite a useful item in the starting village. Stalker rewards exploration, and by keeping your eyes open you can find numerous items that will help you survive easier. If you want relatively easy money, once you get to the Bar and the surrounding areas you will have the opportunity to put the S in to S.T.A.L.K.E.R and loot some nice stuff.

Sidorovich is a bit of a ripoff merchant and has a huge markup on his goods. You can usually trade with other stalkers for items you need at much cheaper prices.

This is THE mod to use on your first playthrough. Made by the extremely talented NatVac, with contributions from all over, this is the grand daddy of all first-play through mods. Forget Complete, this is the new hotness.

Virtually every aspect of the game has been fixed. The mod is entirely modular. You can play as close to vanilla as you wish, or completely tailor the game to your own experience. By far the most stable, bug-free and "Complete" first-time mod out there. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Unlike Complete, this is regularly updated and has been in development a lot longer, with far more fixes, gameplay enhancements and god only knows what else. You want a comparison? Complete is built on a very, very early version of the ZRP. ZRP has moved on leaps and bounds since then.

Part of the Complete family of mods, the goals of these are to make Stalker into the polished game they feel it should be. This includes bug fixes, updated textures, new shaders, and a bunch of other neat stuff.

If for some crazy reason you don't want to use the ZRP, this is the mod for you.

Considered the Grandfather of all Stalker mods, this is a bit of a beast. Rather complicated to install, it adds a lot of new features to the game. Blowouts now occur, cut mutants are added to the game (along with new ones), the a-life system is restored, and firefights are now incredibly lethal. You may think you're hardcore, but this will put it to the test.

Based on AMK is the rather excellent Zone of Alienation, which is designed for hard-core players who want an incredibly detailed simulation. Zone of Alienation

The biggest Shadow of Chernobyl mod to date, this thing is truly insane. Based off the popular Russian mod Narodnaya Soljanka (People's Soup), this aims to be the everything-including-the-kitchen-sink mod. I have not, to date, managed to play and beat this mod to completion. Installing this is almost as much fun as playing it.

When you've truly gotten bored of Shadow of Chernobyl, this is the mod for you.

A rather ambitious mod that hopes to link Clear Sky and Shadow of Chernobyl together. Instead of starting out at the Death Truck, you instead play through the moments leading up to your first trip to the Cordon. Throughout the game you're pursued by a mysterious figure, always out of sight but always watching.

A total conversion of Shadow of Chernobyl. The Zone has been thrown into a deep freeze. Not only do you have to contend with the horrors the zone unleashes, but also the ever persistent threat nature itself has: hypothermia, starvation and god only knows what else. A cross between Stalker and the Thing. Worth checking out.
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The red-headed stepchild of the Stalker series, Clear Sky is a rather strange transitional game. Lacking the later polish of Call of Pripyat (and even some from Shadow of Chernobyl), it introduces many new ideas and concepts, many of which were later incorporated into Call of Pripyat officially, and some later added on by various mods. While most people skip Clear Sky, it's still a very good game and once you can look past the faults it's a very enjoyable experience.

A prequel to Shadow of Chernobyl, you play as the mercenary Scar. While escorting a group of scientists through the Zone, you are caught in the middle of one of the most powerful emissions to ever hit the Zone. Somehow you manage to survive this, and find yourself at the camp of the mysterious Clear Sky faction. These are a group of people operating secretly in the Zone to observe and study its effects. After being hit by a second emission (you are the unluckiest man in the Zone), you find out that you have been in some way marked by the Zone, and now have a more natural affinity to it. This has enhanced your physical prowess but comes at the expense of linking your life to the Zone. The more emissions that occur, the shorter your life will be. It is believed that something or someone is causing the increase emission activity. It is your job to find out what it is. Your life depends on it.

A: Unfortunately, Clear Sky uses a very experimental version of the X-ray engine that hasn't been completely optimized. Shaders are poorly optimized, and the game has fundamental problems with its engine that make it far more system intensive than the other games. Fortunately there are slight cures, but it may not work for you.

As a general rule, if you can get a decent framerate in the Swamps/Clear Sky base, then you will get a good framerate anywhere as these are the two worst optimized areas in the game.

A: Pick whichever one interests you the most! As a general rule, certain factions are harder than others. Bandits, while having the best taste in music, are not as well equipped as Duty or the others. Ultimately it's all preference and the game will mostly play out the same, with a few minor differences.

Q: Grenades?!?

A: Install Clear Sky Complete, never look back

Q: I keep getting slaughtered by the machine gun? What can I do?

A: The most obvious thing to do would be to get out of there, stalker, and find another route.

The third game in the series, it is widely considered to be the most polished. All of the ideas from Clear Sky that worked are incorporated, along with a host of other features and neat stuff. The "definitive" stalker game, if there is such a thing.

Operation Fairway was a classified military operation in the Zone that had the lofty goal to infiltrate and secure the city of Pripyat and the Chernobyl NPP. Due to reasons unknown this mission failed spectacularly. You play as Major Degtyarev, who has been sent undercover into the Zone in order to investigate the failure in the most unsubtle ways possible.

A: Absolutely not! Infact for the first run it's highly recommended you use none, or just a select few. Unlike the other games, Call of Pripyat cribbed a lot from community feedback and fixes and changes from the other games and as such is the most "ready to play" out of the box of all the games.

Q: I ran into a cave and now I'm dead. I should have listened to that strange voice.

A: As soon as you start out you should be near some stalkers. Talk to them. They can point you in the direction of a safe zone.

Q: The Doctor has gone, what's going on?

A: Keep playing.

Q: This crazy man in a boat is shooting at me.

A: This is his way of saying hello. Don't be frightened, he's (mostly) harmless.

Call of Pripyat's answer to Stalkersoup. A huge mod that adds a ton of stuff to the game. Various versions of the game can be found. For the older (more stable, arguably better) version you can find 1.7 here

If you want to try out 2.1 there's a video tutorial here to install it.

Is Call of Pripyat too smiley and happy for you? Then give Misery a shot. A highly recommended mod, it is an almost total rehaul of Call of Pripyat to make everything more dingy, depressing and just plain miserable. Features excellent sound design and a well-thought out system that allows you to play as one of three "classes".

Rush Limbo fucked around with this message at Oct 24, 2013 around 19:16

If anyone sees any broken links in the posts, point them out to me and I'll fix them. I don't have access to imgur at the moment so I'm not sure if there's any working images (library blocks the site).

I'll be updating the OPs with new interesting mods in the next few days.

e: I'm an idiot aswell, if any mods can change the thread tag I'll be very grateful.

e2: The reason I couldn't post in the last thread is that for some reason the library pinpointed that one thread out of all on the SA forums as "Pornographic".

I blame those sexy snorks.

Rush Limbo fucked around with this message at Sep 30, 2013 around 14:12

e2: The reason I couldn't post in the last thread is that for some reason the library pinpointed that one thread out of all on the SA forums as "Pornographic".

I blame those sexy snorks.

Truly the zone is a mystery.

Anyways, this is an odd question, but how do I change the name saves are saved as? Like how it says "game saved - <your name> quicksave"? I figured it used the computer's name, but I changed mine a while back and it still saves under the old name.

Oh good, a new STALKER thread for me to try to follow for a few weeks before giving up and then being weirdly put off by the little button saying there's 430 new posts.
I haven't played with Misery 2 yet, is it still full of broken ironsights and hosed up endurance problems?

The 2.0.2 patch with the quick fix solves a lot of issues. It's still very rough around the edges, though. I'm compiling a little fix pack that I'll have up in the next few days that irons out a lot of the problems, like dodgy weapons, broken scripts and general loving weirdness. Think of it as Misery Unfucked 2.0

I'm holding off on Misery until a proper 2.1 (or something close to that) release hits. It seems like they've got a whole lot of great ideas and content there, but it just needs tuning and playtesting.

Awesome OP. The only thing I take issue with is recommending Complete. If somebody is looking for a mod to use on their first play through of SoC I say nothing fits the bill better than Zone Reclamation Project. Bug fixes, and a true vanilla+ experience not Complete's significantly easier experience.

So I tried to install the shaders for SoC when I noticed I had no Gamedata folder. Reading around, seems that whatever you put in the gamedata folder, as long as it mantains proper folder structure, will get overlaid, so to speak, over the original files.
But now, how do I go about modifying my character's height? I can't find the actor files cause they aren't there, and without the original, I can't modify it! What do I do?

Kill a shitload of mercs, draw the attention of a dog with the gunfire. "Heh", I think, "easy peasy lemon".
Out the corner about 30 assorted dog and pig mutants rush in, kill me.
Reloaded, now I'm at the top of a ladder, and I dropped like 3 of the lovely grenades. What do I even do with these motherfuckers.

Also I'm about to go to either the scientist's places or the army place, saved the naturalist. I'd say I'm like 5 hours into the game. Do I install the Complete mod? Also is there a way to increase my carrying capacity because jesus loving christ is this poo poo tedious.

I played a bit of SoC when it was the new hotness but I don't think I got very far, this thread and GuavaMoment's awesome image album have inspired me to pick up the game again.

As someone who is pretty much a purist when it comes to modding games, will SoC Complete change the game itself or just make it look nicer and run better? I don't even use Biomod for Deus Ex, just the one mod that makes it render properly on newer computers.

I played a bit of SoC when it was the new hotness but I don't think I got very far, this thread and GuavaMoment's awesome image album have inspired me to pick up the game again.

As someone who is pretty much a purist when it comes to modding games, will SoC Complete change the game itself or just make it look nicer and run better? I don't even use Biomod for Deus Ex, just the one mod that makes it render properly on newer computers.

I stand by Complete, but some of the members here don't care for the changes it makes to the difficulty of the game. It is definitely easier than standard SoC, though I find it enjoyable. It'll pretty the game up a fair bit and fixes some bugs (without introducing others, I believe? Someone correct me on that if I'm wrong). I think someone was just talking about the Zone Reclamation Project, which I think is supposed to be like Complete only better.

Honestly, you could probably even just play SoC standard since a lot of the bugs have now been corrected by patches.

Did anybody ever try and make a Co-op campaign mod for SoC? I know it had some multiplayer deathmatch options, though a cursory google seems to say that a few people thought about it, but nobody actually did it. If there's anything like that around it would be great it know about.

Did anybody ever try and make a Co-op campaign mod for SoC? I know it had some multiplayer deathmatch options, though a cursory google seems to say that a few people thought about it, but nobody actually did it. If there's anything like that around it would be great it know about.

I remember in the last thread someone mentioned that a few people are still very serious about their SoC/CoP clams.

Kill a shitload of mercs, draw the attention of a dog with the gunfire. "Heh", I think, "easy peasy lemon".
Out the corner about 30 assorted dog and pig mutants rush in, kill me.
Reloaded, now I'm at the top of a ladder, and I dropped like 3 of the lovely grenades. What do I even do with these motherfuckers.

Also I'm about to go to either the scientist's places or the army place, saved the naturalist. I'd say I'm like 5 hours into the game. Do I install the Complete mod? Also is there a way to increase my carrying capacity because jesus loving christ is this poo poo tedious.

The ability to edit weight limit by itself makes installing the Complete mod worth it. I changed it after only a couple hours of playing; pretty sure I have around 150kg of ammo by now.

e: I think I should have installed the AMK mod instead of Complete. The game is great now that I have the equipment necessary to capitalize on positioning and stealth (silenced weapons accurate enough to reliably get headshots), but the beginning was really dragging with all of the super-inaccurate, high-recoil, low-damage guns that took over a clip to kill anything.

I've tried installing this multiple times and can't get it to take. I've thrown the actor_effects_data.script from the snipers class_diversity folder into the normal script folder, and I'm making sure that it is set to 'Assaulter' when I'm installing your patch. What the hell am I doing wrong?!

Where do I unzip the mods for Call of Pripyat? The folders don't exist anywhere.

The gamedata folder doesn't exist by default. If you've never installed any mods you'll have to make one in the main CoP install directory. You'll also need to open fsgame.ltx in a text editor and change the line with 'gamedata false|true' to true|true.

The nice thing about having all mod files contained in the gamedata folder is that you can easily revert to default settings by just deleting it without needing to worry that you've hosed up your install.

It's a HUGE list of links to various Russian CoP mods, as well as repacked English all-in-one versions for some of the bigger mods that are normally a major pain in the rear end to install (SGM 2.0/2.1/2.2, The Way to Pripyat, Winter of Death, etc.).

Your hotfix doesn't work for me, game crashes while loading. I'm on 2.0.2 with the flashlight fix. The readme doesn't give much of an idea on how to install it so I just replaced all the files with the ones in the base folder. Am I doing something wrong?

Your hotfix doesn't work for me, game crashes while loading. I'm on 2.0.2 with the flashlight fix. The readme doesn't give much of an idea on how to install it so I just replaced all the files with the ones in the base folder. Am I doing something wrong?

Yup, same. It also says to replace the actor_effects_data.scripts but even doing that doesn't avoid the crashing.

Is really painful to install, but i found it easily the best SGM mod there is out there. It is both stable and doesn't throw overpowered loot at you like 2.2 does. It was probably the best CoP experience i have had.

SGM 2.2

SGM 2.2 adds a ton of stupid stuff, like being forced to start in the Cordon and has some extremely vague objectives. I really despised 2.2, and its random exploding chickens, and other bizarre things like Mercs wandering around with rocket launchers.

Geonezi's is based on SGM 2.0, and lacks a lot of the extra maps SGM 2.2 has. However it has a ton more items, quests and joinable factions than the other SGM mods. However it seems to be a bit more buggy, and has some really spotty quests. But david.me the guy who translates these werid russian stalker mods, recommends Geonezi's as the best version of SGM.

So right now I'm fighting my way out of the research center which is effectively where I stopped playing my first foray into STALKER, only having it made to the bar last time. Interestingly last time I was here I felt fairly far-in to the game, but this time I feel like I'm barely getting started. It's weird, I probably couldn't tell you exactly -what- about the game I find compelling, but I do find it compelling.

I am tempted to advance into the 20th century and actually Mod a Game, because even though I want a strictly vanilla experience there's little details that keep bugging me, like my map still yelling at me to kill bandits in the factory ruins, and my PDA entries always appearing to be new every time I open it. Was the ZRP mentioned in the first draft of the OP? I swear I didn't see it there before but it does seem to be about what I'd want.

Is Misery 2.0 any less unbelievably stupid than it was when it came out? I don't see any patches on its ModDB page. I'm getting kinda close to finishing 1.0 and was hoping they fixed it.

I stopped playing due to general stalker fatigue, but I was playing on a build that fixed the most grievous bugs and design decisions and I enjoyed it a ton. Not sure what patch it was, but it felt mostly at a point where it was acceptable. It should be on ModDB because that's where I found it. 2.0 nailed gunplay and stealth, and with the patch fixing everything I think you'll really enjoy it.

Hey DDraig, sorry for the really late reply but in the last thread you asked if I could contact Alundaio for you about a script you had. Unfortunately he does not respond to any emails sent his way, he's ignoring anyone from the Stalker modding community. Hell he may even be dead for all I know, haven't seen any activity from him anywhere.

Also, congrats Enigma. Just noticed your mod on ModDB.
I've been pretty busy but maybe this weekend I'll have time to port another weapon over for you.